Category: Blog

All VIA’s current ARM boards (VAB-600, 820, 1000) have an online mini-PCIe connector, and I’ve been planning to do something interesting with that for a long time (see this intro post from more than a year ago). Thus I’m very …

It has been quite a few years since I’ve last used Xenomai, the real-time application framework for Linux, during the work on my thesis back at the university physics lab. When I’ve found that the VIA VAB-820 board is listed on …

Previously I’ve described here the ProtoSpring board to support quicker prototyping with Springboard. Since then it was put to good use for just that: I’ve tested how the I2C bus works, and created a new device. The inspiration for that new …

After coming up with the idea in part 1 for ProtoSpring, the prototyping board for Springboard, and creating the PCB in part 2, this final segment shows the end-result and a demo application – using GPIO to control a 7-segment display …

In the first part of this series I’ve outlined the idea of making a prototyping extension board for the Springboard, and finished with a rough schematic. Since then I’ve revised the schematic based on experience, and laid out the prototyping board …

I was looking for a project to showcase how easy it is to extend the functionality of the Springboard platform, drawing inspiration from the expansion board that is bundled in the kit. Springboard and expansion board (top), from klinger.net …

Here at VIA we like to learn from others, and our ecosystem is full of very successful examples we can learn from. Just like we were very happy to see RaspberryPi in Taiwan recently, this week we’ve joined the “Designing …

I’ve been converting a lot of our boards’ documentation from PDF to web accessible form. It is a very hands on project, and I have a better feel for the hardware options available. One of the parts I’ve discovered to be …

The VIA Smart Garden is a small Springboard controlled garden, that was developed as a automation demo. It was was mentioned on this blog before, though very briefly. Later this month, along other VIA products, the Smart Garden will visit the Embedded Systems Expo …

Arch Linux is my favorite Linux distribution of the half the dozen I’ve used. It has cutting edge packages, a rolling release (instead of fixed releases it keeps everything always up to date), the best package manager I’ve seen …